Private view

What better way to spend a cold and wet February evening in Paris than at a sneak preview of the latest hot exhibition at the Louvre – with 2,000 of your closest friends?

Calyon, the ambitious French investment bank owned by Crédit Agricole, put on a display of brute financial muscle last week (it is the fifth-largest bank in the world) when it took over the entire basement of the Louvre, under the famous glass pyramid, to give more than 2,000 clients a private view of the Ingres exhibition, which opened last week.